Micro Dreaming

An Experiment for the Month of June

I’m sitting on the floor in a dimly lit room, it’s way past my bedtime, it’s way past midnight and the noisy street never quits its noise. The kids are asleep on the bed next to me and I’m writing in one of the tens of books I use to take notes in. None of them are free from toddler scribbles, in fact, my toddler sat on this one with her butt not yet cleaned the other day. She’d taken her own diaper off and, well, I’ll leave this story there.

I’ve been reflecting on why dreaming gets overwhelming, why it has me in a state of freeze rather than a more generative or desirable state of being open to receive life, to receive my vision, to move towards it and act upon it.

And it hit me.

The lives I dream of living and the roles I dream of assuming are so far away from where I currently am in life.

I think I’ve fallen for the inspirational trap. I’m not meant to always inspire. I’m not to always repurpose my life into actionable steps or lessons. My life can be just that: my life. And right now, this is not the best place to be. But you know what happens when we realize this?

At least for me, I realize that I’m equipped for just that. For this life, for going through these things and living this way until I decide it’s too much and I have and it is.

Photo by Mathieu Turle on Unsplash

I want to change the world. Yes. I have world changing visions living beyond the confines of my life and in the liminal/imaginal space in my genome and epigenetics.

But…

I have to build my capacity for these. I have to reach a state where it’s believable for me to be part of these visions, to live these lives, to create these realities. And so, going against my own judgement, I created a protocol for micro-dreaming.

Doable. Believable. Approachable. Real.

For the four weeks of June, I’m going to decide on 4 little dreams to work towards. Dreams can be goals, plans or desires - they all get a whole week to be “realized”

Micro Dreaming: A Protocol

Step 1: Brain Dump

This is a two part process because thinking of our grievances is a draining process so we need to remedy it with gratitude. It’s similar to counter poses in yoga.

First, we think of all the things we want to change about our lives. Everything. The mess. The loneliness. The dread. Inflation. Borders. The old injury and the story behind how it compounded. The things you weren’t supposed to hear your mother say about you. The things you wished your sister said when your mother said these things about you. How you feel like such an outcast. The old furniture you can’t afford to replace. The honks of Cairo.

Now the things we’re grateful for. Like how you actually like being an outcast because it gives such a beautiful observational spot and vantage point. How there’s very little pressure at the periphery. The ways you share with your similarly broke friends and somehow you have more than enough. Friends you make on the internet. Friends from the internet who come to visit and become kindred. The randomness of Cairo and how you can’t help but smile.

Step 2: List Making

Create a list of 12 things that can be achievable to finish/do/create during a week. This will be your bank of ideas. You can also choose to involve or include others. I write this thinking of my kids and how I can include them in my small dreams. We can paint together, actually, we probably will.

Step 3: A Bank of Feelings

This is where we’ll list how we want to feel. What do we want to experience more of and we’ll pair these with the list above to create feelings you desire more of in your life. I write this thinking of desiring more creativity and connection with my kids (following the example from above). So I’m thinking of making a zine with them. I’ve never made a zine, so this makes beginners of all us. I’m thinking we could have twice as many feelings because these can combine well. So make a list of 24 feelings.

Step 4: Rehearse Obstacles

How might we step ourselves? Can we already troubleshoot for this? This might involve some writing. Rehearsing a future also requires that we rehearse the obstacles that we might face. More often than not, our future selves are more experienced and better versed than our present selves and we come up with even better solutions when/if faced with the projected obstacle.

I have a tendency of feeling very precious about what I create and have noticed how careful I am with paint and how less careful my 8 year old is and even less careful my 2 year old is. So here I am telling Virgo self to be more daring because this is all an experiment.

Step 5: Make it Fun

I’m sure we’ve all experienced losing momentum and “steam” half way through a project and I suspect this is because of one of two reasons. Either the project is greatly influenced by outside factors (and not really your dream) or is something you think you should embark on but don’t really want to (you feel you should but don’t really want to)

For the risk of seeming too woo, let me talk a bit about the ego’s favorite trick: to make itself seem like intuition and have your best interest in mind. This is often the case when you feel like you need to listen to your body and eat all the sugar you can come across or going on this impromptu adventure because we were all created free (Without really putting into consideration that you’ll be broke for the next 12 months because of said adventure)

So how do we make this fun?

1. Treat it like an experiment: if something isn’t working, revisit and revise.

2. Make it random! You can cut up your lists into small slips of paper and pair them. 1 dream with 1-2 feelings and get creative with that.

Will you join me? Let me know some micro-dreams that you want to be experimenting with, I’d love to know. Also, I can’t really promise to (yet) but I might keep you updated with mine!